Category Archives: Birmingham

Networking Crime

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Networking Crime

Victims create a MySpace page to draw attention to Birmingham crime.

September 06, 2007

After being mugged near Five Points South (at the corner of 12th Avenue South and 18th Street) on April 27, Southside residents Lydia Simpson and Greg Martin decided to create an internet forum where other crime victims could share their stories. The resulting site, “Victims of Birmingham Crime” (www.myspace.com/birminghamvictims) began with a recounting of their experience. Soon other stories were posted, detailing terrifying holdups at gunpoint and an often indifferent attitude by Birmingham police officers.

“Response [to the site] was kind of off and on [at first],” says Simpson, who also had her automobile broken into last December during the day (as have two other employees at the Five Points location of Bailey Brothers Music, where both Simpson and Martin work). “But It’s developed a real community feeling to it, where people come together to talk about possible solutions and make other people aware of what’s going on.”

In the case of Simpson’s experience, she and Martin had left Bailey’s Pub late at night and returned to their car when two men pretending to panhandle approached the couple. Simpson was already sitting inside when one of the strangers jumped into the car before Martin could get in. One assailant shoved Simpson against the door, grabbed her by the throat, and yelled, “Give me your purse, bitch, give me your f***ing purse, bitch.” He also burned Simpson’s arm with a cigarette. Outside, the other attacker was punching Martin after knocking him to the ground. After the men fled with Simpson’s purse, a policewoman who had been flagged down by the couple chased the muggers. That’s when a second group of men hanging out in a nearby parking lot began approaching Simpson and Martin, yelling at them. The couple immediately headed toward Bailey’s Pub but the second group of thugs caught up with them and gave Martin another beating. He and Simpson eventually broke free and ran back to the club.

Simpson was not happy with the comment made by the officer who arrived to fill out a report. According to Simpson, “The response by one of the officers was, ‘I guess that’ll teach you to stay out of Southside.’” However, she is quick to defend Birmingham police officers in general. “In the first interview that we did with CBS [local affiliate CBS 42] . . . the angle had been that the police are discouraging people from reporting crimes, and that’s why the statistics are skewed. So when CBS asked [the police] for a comment, they basically just denied it outright. The sergeant in charge at the Southside precinct can’t possibly know exactly what all of his officers are saying at all times. I don’t think it’s necessarily a departmental policy; they’re just overworked and underpaid. When it comes down to doing the paperwork for something that they see every day, they’re just burned out.”

Another account on the site is from a couple who were returning to their car around midnight on a Friday night. The vehicle was parked a block away from Bell Bottoms nightclub in Five Points South. Two men ran toward them and surrounded the car. The female was already seated behind the wheel. Her companion was not yet inside when one assailant thrust what was believed to be a 9mm pistol into the man’s stomach, demanding money as he began counting backwards from “three.” By the time the attacker reached “one,” the male victim had his cash out. The panicked woman screamed for the assailant not to shoot, at which point he aimed his gun at her and demanded her money and phone. The other mugger then grabbed her purse, but an oncoming automobile interrupted the robbery before the car keys could be handed over.

The couple walked to the nearby Ruby Tuesday restaurant and found two police officers who wrote a report but “seemed not to care,” suggesting that the robbers had probably disappeared into a club.

At the MySpace site, Simpson, Martin, and others are often defiant about not yielding control of their community to thugs. Yet they offer safety tips such as wearing practical shoes “that will not hinder you from being able to escape an attack,” apparently indicating that visitors to Southside should be combat-ready. “I see women walking around Southside in stilettos,” Martin noted, shaking his head. “And it’s a good way to get hurt.” The 37-year-old Martin has watched Southside evolve into an area far more dangerous than the one he remembers from his youth. “I used to hang around the fountain when I was young.” he said. “But I wouldn’t let my child hang around there today. &

A Real Character

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A Real Character

Lily Tomlin brings her one-woman show to the Alys Stephens Center.

October 18, 2007At YouTube.com you can find a couple of clips of confrontations that occurred during production of the movie I Heart Huckabees, an irate Lily Tomlin flips off both director David O. Russell and co-star Dustin Hoffman as she angrily shouts “Fu** you.” After viewing them, I was a little nervous about speaking with Tomlin. However, the actress and comedienne was completely charming in relating anecdotes about Flip Wilson, Richard Pryor, her family’s Southern heritage, and summers spent on her cousins’ farm in Kentucky. Her laughter is the same genuine, infectious cackle she has let loose on late night talk shows for decades.

Black & White: I read that you were once a pre-med student.

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(click for larger version)

Lily Tomlin: Oh, kind of. You know . . . I was, technically, but that doesn’t mean much. It just means you take a lot of science courses, or start to. I never graduated college and I never did very well in college. I sort of had textbook narcolepsy. You open one and the aroma from the page or something just knocks you out. You crash forward.

Do you remember when you felt confident that you could consistently make someone laugh?

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Tomlin as Ernestine. (click for larger version)

I did it all through my childhood because I always put on shows and things. I lived in an old apartment house in Detroit . . . You know how Southerners are. [Her parents and relatives are from Kentucky.] Everybody in the family—at least from that generation—was so quirky and had their own little personality. People were so colorful, [including] all my aunts and my uncles, and my dad and my mom, too. My mom was witty and adorable. My dad was just kind of a character, he was a street character. I went to the bars with him and the bookie joints. He was a factory worker but he always wore a suit jacket to work and a hat and he wore Florsheim shoes. And he always had a big roll of money on him because he gambled. My mom was, of course, the total opposite. She was a good Southern woman who had a good house.

Every summer I went to Kentucky and lived on the farm with my aunt and uncle and all those old cousins, with whom I’m still close. I have a real bond with family. As differently as I was raised, being in the inner city of Detroit and growing up in a black neighborhood . . . I just had a whole richness of experience with all kinds of different people. And, of course, then I would be on the farm when I was a little kid. I’d see animals copulating and I’d go back to kindergarten and paint it! I knew it was something I wasn’t supposed to talk about or illustrate. But I liked holding court, you know? Getting a little rise out of people.

Did your kindergarten teachers ever scold you?

No, I could see they would be a little bit shocked and a little bit amused. And so then I would just pursue it. I don’t ever remember really being suppressed. Maybe a kind of omission of praise. I was just more amused by it. I knew it caused a charge, a little charge in the room. And I must have liked the theatricality of it.

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Tomlin as Edith Ann. (click for larger version)

I read that you studied under Charles Nelson Reilly.

I knew Charles, he was a friend. I only studied with him a couple of weeks because I got on “Laugh-In” and went to California. But the couple of classes I had with him—let me tell you, he was so inventive I feel like I missed out by not having a full course of study with him. He was just absolutely incredibly inventive.

Did you know Paul Lynde?

Oh yes [laughing], I knew Paul. I lived around the corner from him for a long time. I’d walk my dog up around his house and I went to his house many times for dinner. And I also went to a couple of Thanksgivings at his sister’s house. He was a scream [Tomlin does a quick Paul Lynde impersonation] . . . It was well-known that Paul was not a very, uh, happy drinker [laughs]. So if he got too abusive, rooms usually cleared. It was because he could be wicked. He had a real quick, acidic tongue.

Didn’t you upset some television executives when you gave Richard Pryor a big kiss in 1973 on your CBS special?

They had sent down word from the executive offices: “Don’t kiss Richard goodnight.” And we couldn’t believe it. It was certainly not for any show or anything. In fact, I kissed everybody, I kissed all my guests . . . Of course, Richard had his hair corn-rowed on that show. And he came on the set the morning we were gonna shoot and people hadn’t seen corn-rows very much. It was sort of a new thing. And he had it wrapped with white leather and he was making remarks like, “Well, imagine these came from certain Caucasian people.” He said they were wrapped in “human skin,” which wasn’t going over too well, either. But Richard was so brilliant. Actually, that was the show that we did the soul food piece that got a lot of play, a lot of attention. He played a junkie and I owned a soul food restaurant.

Did any of your characters originate from your early days spent performing in coffee houses?

Yes. One character, definitely: The World’s Oldest Living Beauty Expert. Of course, I was conscious of how women had to be younger and better-looking and the pressure on women to be like that. And I was fascinated because Helena Rubinstein and all the old queens of beauty—Estée Lauder and Elizabeth Arden—were so old. They were in their 80s. You never really saw photographs of them except early photographs.

And Helena Rubinstein had that ad on TV with these hands and great fingernails and great big rings she had, and she’d say [Tomlin claps her hands twice loudly and adopts a thick German accent] “I am Helenor Rubinshteim!” But you’d only see her hands and they would show her products. So I was just fascinated by that whole thing, and that was sort of my reaction to the obsession with youth and beauty, because she’s an old beauty consultant and her face is all deteriorated, as you can’t avoid with time and gravity. And then she rejuvenates it, and then she sneezes and it all falls down again. That was one of my first monologues.

Tell me about your experiences on Flip Wilson’s show.

That was one of the first guest shots that I got to do after I was on “Laugh-In” and was well-known. He was so big at that time. In those old days you had those half-dozen variety shows and everybody would do guest shots. You don’t have that anymore.

Flip and I did this whole routine where Ernestine is teaching Geraldine how to be a phone operator. [Flip and I] did a thing about date-matching and we’re in the lobby together and we’re getting along so well. And this is a very innocent, sweet kind of sketch from those early days. My God, this goes back 40 years, almost. And you can see that we’re just sort of meant for each other but then we go in and, of course, we’re not gonna be paired, partly because of the racial thing at that time. But that’s never spoken of but it’s implied.

Are you ever offended by comics like Sam Kinison or Andrew Dice Clay?

No, I’m not offended but it depends. I wouldn’t go out of my way to see it. Now, Sam used to tickle me a little bit. That one thing he had when he talked about people starving to death [in Africa]. He’d say, “There’s no food there, go where the food is!” That sort of incredible black irony. But I couldn’t even quote very much of what Sam did onstage. Who knows why people get up the persona they get to do what they do? I’m much more attracted to the more humanistic. I greatly adored Pryor. Because his material was so human, so vulnerable. He was so vulnerable himself. I’m more drawn to character portrayal. I’m not a big fan of scatological stuff.

Has Ernestine [Tomlin's telephone operator character] been approached by the Bush Administration to perhaps assist with wire-tapping in the past few years?

When the whole NSA thing surfaced, a lot of editorial cartoonists went back and used Ernestine. They had her in the White House phone room with those little slit eyes, listening. She constantly resurfaces. In recent times, she has a reality-based webcast chat show called “Ernestine Calls You On It, and You Better Have an Answer.” Wherever she can have power. Not too long ago she took a job at one of the HMOs so she could decline all the requests for life-saving healthcare. [laughs]

Didn’t you and other cast members snub John Wayne when he appeared on “Laugh-In”?

[Laughing] Well, I didn’t get my picture taken with him ’cause I was so anti-war at the time, and so anti-Nixon and the White House scene. And then once a very sad thing happened. You know, when you’re young like that, instead of engaging John Wayne in some way . . . to me it was more juvenile, but in those days—or any day—it seems like that’s how you took a stand. But I’m not saying it’s productive. It’s not a very good tactic.

Anyway, so Martha Mitchell [the wife of Nixon attorney general John Mitchell who frequently leaked to reporters information about her husband's Watergate activity] came on the show. You know how she was always calling journalists at night. She was known for that, her phone activity. So I was supposed to do a phone call with her. And I did but I only did it on the split screen, you know? It was just stupid [not to appear on the set with Mitchell]. I mean, I really see it as stupid.

And then later, when all that terrible stuff happened to her with John Mitchell—many people think she was really, really suppressed, both physically and verbally. Many people think she was taken prisoner in a sense, or sedated. And then in her autobiography she talks about that, on one of the very earliest pages. And I only read it after she died. And she said how deeply hurt she was that I snubbed her at “Laugh-In.” And she would be exactly the kind of woman that I would be able to communicate with. She’s just like a family member—flamboyant, Southern, plenty to say, and kind of has that engaging innocence. It was something I totally regretted.

What was your reaction when you discovered that the clips from I Heart Huckabees, where you and director David Russell are cursing one another, were on YouTube?

Well, first of all, they were old. They were like four years old, and I had never really seen them. But they had made the rounds of the agencies here at the time. We’re [Russell and Tomlin] still friends. In fact, we were friends probably 10 or 15 minutes after one of those things happened. But it was the same week that poor Britney Spears was in that incredible, uh, you know, uh, crotch shot—I’m trying to choose a word for “crotch shot”—on the internet. Those words [on the YouTube clip] were inside of me and I said them. People are going to have to realize that maybe I’m not the perfect, well-behaved, well-spoken person they might imagine I would be. And some guy in China made a rap song to it . . .

Would the type of confrontation you had with Russell ever have happened between you and Robert Altman?

Noooo, God, no . . . David’s pretty volatile, anyway, and it was just the nature of what was going on that day. And you saw me. I said, “I’ve had it up to here!” [laughs] And I was pretty upset that day from all kinds of circumstances. You can’t hear David. He’s yelling at me outside the car, saying all kinds of things. But you can only hear me, unfortunately.

Altman, he was one of a kind. Even when we were making A Prairie Home Companion, he was getting chemo. But you would never even think about it, other than that he was kind of frail. But he was completely Altman, he was completely in charge without being in any way authoritative or overbearing. He was just so cool. Actors just adored Altman because he was just incredibly human, available, unpretentious. And if you made Altman laugh, that was really awesome.

Let me tell you this story because it didn’t get in the movie, because his cameras are floating all the time. A lot of times you do something and it’s not really being photographed. So when Meryl Streep and I would talk [in the film] about our mother when we would sing, and we’re talking about the old days and how Momma was scrubbing the floor and how our singing made her smile and all that, and what hard times we had. This is a story about my own father and his family. And I love this story so much that I was always thinking, “Now where can I get it into [a movie]? This is the perfect movie.”

So I said [to Streep's character], “Well, all our times weren’t hard. Remember when we as kids were acting up and Momma would boil an ear of corn and put it down on the floor and we’d all root around and eat it like we were pigs? Those were happy times!” And Altman laughed . . . It wasn’t on film and I never repeated it. If I’d known it wasn’t on film, believe me, I would have repeated it. &

Lily Tomlin appears Saturday, November 3, 8 p.m., at the Alys Stephens Center. Tickets are $28-$62. Details: 975-2787 or www.alysstephens.org.

City Hall Howlers

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City Hall Howlers

Contradictions, gaffes, slips of the tongue, and other wrongheaded statements from our local officials.

June 28, 2007Conjugating and Jiving

Birmingham resident Marcus Lipsey has been an often vocal malcontent at City Council meetings the past few months. Lipsey seemingly has an opinion on nearly everything the council discusses. During debate on a liquor license application at the June 5 meeting, Lipsey objected to approval of the application because according to him, alcohol is destroying the black community. Councilor William Bell immediately objected to Lipsey addressing another issue. (Lipsey had addressed two issues earlier in the evening, including interrupting council procedure to voice his discontent.) “It’s not germane to the issue,” said Bell of Lipsey’s argument. “If we’re going to have a proper meeting, I am not anticipating on sitting here as Mr. Lipsey speaks out on every issue, [to] use this as pontification for whatever his mind is conjugating [sic] up. I am not going to sit here and allow this council to continue to be brought down by such actions.”

At the June 19 meeting, the City Council approved changes in the animal control ordinance (to take effect October 1, 2007) that would make it against the law for all cats, whether wearing a collar or not, to roam free. When councilors discussed the issue one week earlier, Councilor Carol Duncan said that she personally finds it impossible to keep collars on her three cats, named “Mo, Woody, and Wonkie.” The councilor recently took in a three-legged feral cat that had just died. “I named her Jinx after Halle Berry in the [James Bond] movie. They were going to put her down. But she had a wonderful four years with me . . . I am truly a lover of life, a lover of animals, trees, everything.” &

Top This

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Top This

Local musician, libertine, and hard-living nightlife veteran Topper Price shuffles off with a legacy of unbeatable stories.

May 31, 2007
Topper Price, a local blues harmonica virtuoso and singer, died on May 16 at age 54, a victim of the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle he enthusiastically led for nearly 40 years. A legend in Alabama for his spirited, emotionally charged performances in seedy bars and the occasional elegant nightclub, Price—a baseball fanatic—once defined his style with this appropriate quote: “Chicago-style rhythm and blues, buddy. That’s my pitch. That’s the one I can knock out of the ballpark.” A joke that spread around town in the days following his death was that with Topper’s demise, angry bartenders were ripping up tabs that he’d left unpaid for months, if not years. Topper was a mess—a “mess” in both senses: as a rascal for whom we harbor fondness, and as a self-destructive personality in the way he often conducted his life.

Strangers, close friends, and mere acquaintances were continually amazed at Topper’s gregariousness and seemingly endless knowledge about a number of topics. If anyone wondered who pitched the third game of the 1982 World Series, for example, Topper had the answer. Price could tell you what car Mario Andretti was driving the year he won the Formula One world racing championship (a Lotus), then give engine and chassis specifications before reeling off accomplishments by drivers A.J. Foyt, Dan Gurney, or Al Unser—and that was before he got around to discussing music or obscure historical facts about World War II. He rarely shunned an admirer who wanted to talk, and would spend hours at a bar asking strangers questions about their lives, though it usually helped spur conversation if the strangers were buying the drinks.

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Topper Price on stage with the Subdudes. (Photo by Chris Baker.) (click for larger version)

 

 

In a 1999 documentary by Birmingham filmmaker Chris Holmes, Topper explained how he started in show business: “I played my harmonica everywhere I went, at wildly inappropriate times. Wrong keys, wrong bands. Walked up to people I didn’t even know and started playing for them. I was the prototype of a really enthusiastic, horrible harmonica player who drove everybody around him nuts. Finally people started giving me lessons just to get me to be a little better, because they knew they were going to have to listen to me anyway . . . So I was bad for a long time and then all of a sudden one day I was pretty good. People started asking me to play instead of asking me to leave. I guess that was my big commercial break.”

Price eventually met Wet Willie singer Jimmy Hall, who gave Topper his most useful harmonica lesson. “Just blow as hard as you can and you’ll figure out the rest,” Hall said. Price’s masterful touch of country and blues literally defined Dickey Betts’ early solo work after Price was invited to play on the former Allman Brothers Band member’s first solo record. Topper’s late buddy Rick Danko invited him onstage with The Band from time to time. “Hey, pal. That was j-u-u-u-st right,” drummer Levon Helm told Price one night in Atlanta after Topper played with The Band on “Mystery Train.”

Topper was known to call friends on the anniversary of their parents’ deaths, and he’d drop by the hospital to visit those whom he knew only peripherally. He often phoned friends unexpectedly simply to tell them that he loved them and was thinking about them.

“I was bad for a long time and then all of a sudden one day I was pretty good. People started asking me to play instead of asking me to leave. I guess that was my big commercial break.”

Tim Boykin was Topper’s guitar player for a decade. “Topper was leading the band, and he would do stuff to try to scuttle the band performance, trying to screw up the band on purpose. Sometimes I would stand behind him, if we had new guys playing that night, and cue the band to what was supposed to happen. Topper would get pissed off at me because I would give the band the right cues,” Boykin said, laughing. “But I sure did love Topper and I miss the hell out of him.”

Price’s ability to play while extremely intoxicated was legendary. Boykin remembered Topper would get pretty drunk and forget who he was playing with. “He’d turn to me and call me ‘Rick’ [Kurtz, who often swapped out guitar duties with Boykin], but he could still play his ass off and not even know where he was.”

Once, his backing band The Upsetters were playing in Florida. “God, he almost burned down a condo we were staying at in Destin,” said Boykin. “He put a TV dinner in the oven without taking it out of the cardboard box and went to bed. Smoked up the damn condo.”

Don Tinsley, who played bass with Topper in The Upsetters for 20 years, recalled Topper’s swagger whenever he entered a room, his head tilted at a cocky angle. “If it wasn’t his gig he would wander up with that swagger and lean on the stage, as if to say, ‘you’re going to get me up to play, right?’ The first time I met him was at a club in the late ’70s or early ’80s when he walked up and did that to the Amazing Rhythm Aces. They didn’t even know him.”

Tinsley’s favorite story involved a dead opossum. “We were coming back from an out-of-town gig up over the hill by Vulcan. We started down and there was a car coming up the hill. All of sudden, from out of nowhere, the biggest opossum I’d ever seen in my life was slowly ambling across the road. We slowed up a little and it kept on walking, but the other car didn’t see it. Topper stuck his head out of the window of our van and shouted “Heeeey!” as loud as he could, and he sounded exactly like James Brown. And the guy in the oncoming car looked at Topper and the opossum stopped and looked at Topper, and the other car squashed the opossum flat. That was Topper, trying to do the right thing.”

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Price in the recording studio with Robert Moore. (click for larger version)

 

 

“I’ve seen him light a cigarette on a stove and then turn the flame up instead of off, and then walk away, oblivious. He wasn’t looking at the stove, he was on autopilot, just taking care of business,” Tinsley said. “I think that was in Florida, just like the TV dinner incident. For some reason, Topper and the coast just didn’t get along.”

The day Upsetters guitarist Rick Kurtz learned that Topper had died, he found a baseball glove that Topper had given him in 1988. “We played catch in the backyard all the time when I lived with him for a while . . . About a year after that he gave me [Minnesota Twins slugger] Rod Carew’s instruction book on hitting a baseball. Here I was, 38 years old, and that’s something you give a Little League kid. It was beautiful. He even signed it for me: ‘Kurtzy, I want you to have this.’”

Highland Music owner Don Murdoch said that his wife always insisted that Topper be invited to Murdoch’s Christmas parties. “Everybody would be standing around, making small talk, with things not too lively. Then Topper would show up, pull out his harp, and start doing Christmas carols. He saved my Christmas party every year,” Murdoch said.

Murdoch recalled the day that he and an ex-girlfriend were driving to lunch in his convertible sports car with Topper. Murdoch’s lady friend had a severe case of poison ivy and was complaining constantly as they drove. While at a stop light, Topper suddenly stood up in the back of the tiny convertible and loudly sang the classic “Poison Ivy” while they waited for the light to change. The light turned green, and Topper took a bow as fellow motorists applauded and cheered.

Topper’s former road manager Joey Oliver spoke of the night that Topper played a party at the home of Southern Poverty Law Center director Morris Dees in Montgomery. At the end of the evening, Topper playfully punched Dees in the arm as he often did to others. Dees did not find it funny, and Topper turned to Oliver and said, “Joey, I think I just fu**ed up. I just hit the man who got rid of the Ku Klux Klan.”

Oliver remembered being at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival with Price, who was backstage after playing with The Radiators. Topper spied CBS newsman Ed Bradley and introduced himself. About that time, Price’s girlfriend walked over and asked Bradley, “Do you know Topper?” Bradley smiled and said, “Everybody knows Topper.”

“I’ve often credited Topper with giving me a career,” said Damon Johnson, formerly of Birmingham’s Brother Cane. The band’s 1993 hit “Got No Shame” featured a blistering harmonica intro by Topper. “That harmonica intro is what made our song stand out above everything else on rock radio at the time. . . . We worked with a producer named Jim Mitchell, who was an assistant producer and engineer on the Guns N’ Roses album Use Your Illusion.” Mitchell wanted to use a harmonica player who had worked with Guns N’ Roses but Johnson argued for using Topper. Price, who had never heard the song, came into Airwave Studios in Birmingham where Brother Cane recorded the harmonica overdub, and recorded two takes, the first of which is heard on the song. “The first note that the world heard of Brother Cane was Topper inhaling [to begin] the intro to ‘Got No Shame.’”

Jazz singer and trumpeter Robert Moore, who recently moved from Birmingham to Oregon, spoke at length on Price: “Topper robbed my liquor cabinet constantly. He would put bottles that he’d drained back into my freezer, empty. But Jesus, I loved him. I’ll never forget once asking him about an old Memphis soul tune, to which he instantly recounted the year, the producer, label, musicians on the date, etc. It floored me. Why Google when a phone call to Top would tell you more? And the range of his data bank wasn’t restricted to music. I bought a used Ford pickup a few years ago. Top only looked at it, and said to me, ‘Moore, that’s a 289 right? I think those engines were made in Canada by Ford that year—great vehicle.’ I later opened the truck door to examine the ID plate, and found that every detail he’d ‘guessed’ was exactly accurate.”

One summer while living in Mobile, Topper had a brief fling of sorts with Charles Manson clan member Patricia Krenwinkel before he discovered that she was a fugitive (Krenwinkel participated in the Tate/LaBianca murders in 1969). Topper, who was then about 16 years old, was watching television with some friends when a news bulletin announced that Krenwinkel had been arrested in Mobile (Manson had sent her there to live with her aunt after the murders). Krenwinkel had been apprehended at a favorite Mobile hangout of Topper and his pals. “We’ve got to get out of this house!” said one guy, terrified that the police might raid the home, where Krenwinkel had been hanging around for a week or so. When Topper asked why everyone was so freaked out, one fellow said, “Hey Top. Remember Katie, that girl who’s been giving you back rubs whenever she stops by? That’s Krenwinkel.”

I’ll never forget being at The Nick around 3 a.m. when Topper, usually low on cash and always searching for free drinks, walked outside and spied a dozen plastic cups of half-consumed cocktails on the banister in front of the club. With lightning speed, he grabbed each cup and drank the leftover contents. Before walking back into the club, he stopped long enough to spit a hail of cigarette butts, machine gun-style, against the outside wall. My jaw dropped, just as it had several nights previously when he snatched the cup of water The Nick’s security guard had been using only moments earlier to polish his shoes outside the club. Topper downed the liquid that he must have assumed was bourbon and water.

If only Topper had cared about his own health as much as he did about the well-being of his buddies. I remember once complaining about my problems with gout. “Eddie, what you need to do is go to the grocery store and get a can of Bing cherries. That’s Bing cherries, you got that? It’s a miracle cure,” he growled in his affected Howlin’ Wolf voice. Months later he asked about my gout. I told him the Bing cherries didn’t work. Then I asked how he had been doing, and I’ll never forget his response—the last words I ever heard from him. That his reply referenced chemistry was appropriate. “Eduardo, my friend, I’m a free radical in search of a covalent bond.” &

On Wednesday, June 27, The Nick will host a fundraiser in memory of Price. For more information, call 252-3831.

Where the Beers Are

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Where the Beers Are

Anyone interested in exploring the world of microbrewed and “gourmet” beer can find a staggering variety of interesting beers in the Birmingham area.

May 31, 2007
For those seeking beer to go, Vulcan Beverage on University Boulevard has the largest selection in Alabama, with approximately 250 bottled beers available. “We’re the largest seller of Samuel Smith beer in the state,” brags Vulcan owner Mark Green. There are 12 different Samuel Smith beers in stock, as well as 10 flavors of Samuel Adams. Other favorites include Hobgoblin (a dark English ale), Abita Strawberry Ale (made with Louisiana strawberries), Xingu (Brazilian black beer), and Redbridge (made from sorghum, and gluten free).Overton & Vine in Mountain Brook is a popular beer oasis with personality to spare. Atmosphere is provided by Waylon Jennings or The Grateful Dead on the radio; framed, autographed portraits of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jerry Garcia on the walls; and loquacious owner Smitty Smith behind the counter. (Smitty’s not shy about sharing his feelings on a variety of topics; ask him how he feels about the governor.) Stella Artois is the store’s best-selling import. The top-selling microbrew is Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. Other popular brews include Rodenbach (Belgium), Red Tail (California), Sweetwater (Atlanta), Flying Dog (Denver), Tiger Beer (Singapore), and Terrapin (Athens, Georgia).

Single beer purchases are available at both Vulcan Beverage and Overton & Vine, as well as the opportunity for customers to create their own six-packs, a boon for anyone reluctant to try a six-pack of an expensive import.

An impressive gourmet beer selection is also on the shelf at the Piggly Wiggly supermarkets in Crestline, Homewood, and Liberty Park; Tria Market in Homewood’s Soho Square (singles available); Whole Foods at the intersection of Highway 280 and Rocky Ridge Road; and the Western supermarkets on Rocky Ridge Road and in Mountain Brook.

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If you prefer to drink in a bar or restaurant, there are three On Tap Sports Cafes in the area (Lakeview, Inverness, and Hoover) that feature 25 different brands of draft on tap. Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and Newcastle are among top sellers. Cafe Ciao in English Village offers 11 eclectic beers on tap, which is fairly impressive for a small café.

But The J. Clyde restaurant on Cobb Lane is turning beer aficionados on their heads, so to speak, offering more than 150 different brands on tap or in bottles. If you come specifically to sample the beer, ask the hostess to pair you with one of the servers who is a beer aficionado (unfortunately, not all fit this bill).

“Far and away the best restaurant bar in Birmingham for these beers,” says Danner Kline, founder of Free the Hops, about J. Clyde. Kline is irate that so few white tablecloth restaurants in the area serve fine beers. “Those places give beer no respect,” Kline says. “They think almost exclusively in terms of wine. Beer is an afterthought. A few of them offer a Newcastle or a Guinness. I’ve yet to see any of those places carry more than seven or eight beers. It’s pathetic. . . . Here they are, a high-end restaurant carrying high-end wine, and yet they’re carrying the McDonald’s of beer. Beer does pair really well with food, and they don’t understand that.” —Ed Reynolds

The following are some of the retail and bar establishments that offer quality selections of gourmet and microbrewed beer in the greater Birmingham area.

Retail: Vulcan Beverage (Southside): 328-6275, www.vulcanbeverage.com; Overton & Vine (Mountain Brook): 967-1409; Diplomat Deli (Vestavia): 979-1515; Tria Market (Homewood): 776-8923, www.triamarket.com; Whole Foods (Mountain Brook): 912-8400, www.wholefoods.com.

Restaurant: The J. Clyde (Southside): 939-1312, www.jclyde.com; The Barking Kudu (Lakeview): 328-1748, www.barkingkudu.com; Cafe Ciao (English Village): 871-2423; On Tap Sports Café: www.ontapsportscafe.com, Hoover: 988-5558, Inverness: 437-1999, Lakeview: 320-1225.

City Hall — Council Debates a Bright Future

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Council Debates a Bright Future

The Council clashes on the merits of digital billboards.

 

May 17, 2007

At the May 1 City Council meeting, Councilor Valerie Abbott, chair of the planning and zoning committee, sought a temporary moratorium on LED digital billboards and other outdoor electric business signs. “Our city sign ordinance is very old,” explained Abbott, concerning the need for a moratorium until city codes can be updated to address digital sign technology. The councilor said that the ordinances regulating outdoor advertising in Birmingham were written before electronic billboards existed. Currently, two digital LED billboards operate in Birmingham’s city limits, according to the councilor.

Discussion of the resolution for the proposed moratorium included a public hearing, allowing local residents to address the issue. Surprisingly, few opponents of digital billboards spoke, whereas several advocates expressed approval of the technology. Local radio personality and one-time mayoral candidate Frank Matthews claimed that more advertising generates more revenue for businesses. “When you look at the digital billboards, it gives somewhat of a twenty-first-century perspective to Birmingham overall. . . . I am sick of seeing antiquated ugly signs. I like that newness,” said Matthews. He then accused Abbott of bringing up the issue because she is reportedly running for mayor.

Chris Dehaven of Pelham sign company Dixie LED was present to defend the LED signs. He pointed to the billboard’s efficient use of electricity. “It is the emerging sign art, there’s no doubt about it,” Dehaven told the council. “Almost half of all the signs that we do are for cities, parks, schools, and churches. Only about half of them are actually used by business owners. Unfortunately, a lot of business owners would like to have it, but they don’t have the funds [that are] available in the public sector.”

“There’s a giant TV screen on the side of the road and you’ve got to make sure that these aren’t going to hurt somebody.” —Lisa Harris, executive director of Scenic Alabama

LED billboards change messages every six to eight seconds, and their intense brightness (which can be controlled) and high resolution are transforming outdoor advertising. Instead of buying space, advertisers can buy time on LED billboards. The billboards also give advertisers the ability to frequently and easily modify their ads.

Reverend Wanda Radford of the organization Mothers Who Want the Violence to Stop (Radford’s son was killed in August 2006 in a random shooting) praised Lamar Advertising for donating billboards that feature images of slain children and the promotion of cash rewards for information leading to solving the crimes. “If we had the money to put up electronic billboards, we would do so,” said Radford, who challenged the city to use digital billboards to assist in searching for homicide suspects.

A DVD presentation by Tom Traylor of Lamar Advertising touted the efficiency and impact of LED digital billboards. “Unlike other elements a driver encounters, digital billboards do not flash nor do they feature animation, motion video, or intermittent light,” according to the video. The billboards’ ability to flash Amber Alert notifications were also praised as a benefit.

Councilor Steven Hoyt is opposed to any moratorium. “There’s not been a moratorium on all these junkyards that appear in the community. Neither has there been one on the beer and wine licenses that we hand out every week, and we’re still trying to rewrite those ordinances and zoning issues. And I’m just not inclined to impede a business that is thriving. Aesthetically, it looks good.” Hoyt continued, “I’m distracted by all this grass that the state department doesn’t cut, going down the freeway . . . I really want to commend Lamar for stepping up their game, and it sets a precedent for others who want to get into the business.”

City attorney Lawrence Cooper, however, warned that the law could be lagging behind technology, and that safety and brightness issues could be distracting to motorists. “If we allow these billboards to continue to go up right now, they may be grandfathered in with some type of technology that is not useful,” said Cooper. “So please be aware of the law trying to play catch-up with issues that we’re presented with.”

A current Federal Highway Administration study has not been completed, which is the reason the planning and zoning committee suggested a moratorium until potential LED sign distractions and subsequent dangers are determined, according to Abbott. The councilor explained that the committee wants to study whether LED digital signs should be allowed at certain intersections where there is a lot of dangerous traffic—such as Malfunction Junction—or if they should be allowed near residential areas. “We’re not saying, ‘Ban the signs.’ We’re saying, ‘Let’s stop and look at the issue and make sure we’re doing the intelligent thing in our city.’ Other cities have banned them completely, [or] they’ve put restrictions on them,” said Abbott. “So that is the reason for asking for the moratorium, so that we have time to look at the issue before we have a whole city full of signs and can’t do anything about them because we’ve already allowed them.”

Vestavia Hills revoked a permit for a digital billboard last year after it was determined that the sign failed to comply with the city’s sign ordinance. Lamar Advertising has filed an appeal to have the sign reinstated.

“It was in a pretty bad location on Rocky Ridge Road,” said Rebecca Leavings, acting city clerk for the city of Vestavia Hills. “It’s in litigation right now . . . Our sign ordinance says no changing images or animation or flashing—or something like that. So it comes down to what’s going to be an interpretation by the courts as to whether or not that’s what was [in violation]. But it was in a poor location. Also, it was right down on the road.”

Digital billboards are prohibited in Hoover, according to Stan Benton, assistant director of building inspections services for the city. Signs with electronically changeable messages, flashing lights, and reader boards (except for public service, time and temperature signs, and scoreboards at athletic facilities) are prohibited, as are any new locations of billboards of any type.

“The point is that the city council is responsible for the health, safety, and welfare of the general public,” said Lisa Harris, executive director of Scenic Alabama, in a telephone interview. “It is vital to the traveling public, to our residents and our citizens that nothing hazardous is going to happen [as a result of] those [LED billboards]. We have trucks [dropping] steel coils, we lost an overpass from a crash of a tanker, we have trucks coming through there. [The council] needs to at least know what the safety issues are and make a decision based on that, not just based on ‘aren’t these things wonderful and flashy!’ You need to make sure that no one is going to have a wreck looking at them before you allow them to go in. . . . There’s a giant TV screen on the side of the road and you’ve got to say, if you’re a responsible elected official, ‘Let’s make sure that these aren’t going to hurt somebody.’”

Lamar Advertising has requested permits for two more LED billboards. The Birmingham City Council approved a two-week delay. At press time, the moratorium was scheduled for a vote at the May 15 council meeting. &